Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also share in the sympathy for Kim Damti's family. For a young woman of 22 years of age to lose her life in such a tragic way is horrific.

I ask the Tánaiste about one of his Ministers ignoring Transport Infrastructure Ireland's, TII, data on spending funds on restructuring roads and maintenance of existing roads. The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, decided against it even though his Department has full data that show the number of fatalities that will be caused if funds are not spent on the national road networks. This is also reflected in our local county councils not being able to repair or resurface roads. One reason is the local authorities cannot get staff. I had engineers contact me during the week saying they cannot retain staff, even within the county councils, for the road networks, and they cannot get the funding to resurface roads and do basic repairs on them for safety.

We also have concerns on the road network about cutting hedges for health and safety of lives. The Wildlife Acts tell us that we cannot cut certain hedges on roadsides. We now have our transport network of buses, trucks and cars travelling in the middle of roads because if a local authority goes to repair a road, it is allowed to cut 1 m in and 2 m up. What happens? The hedgerow heads for the centre. Where are the mirrors on a bus? Up at 2 m. Where are the mirrors on a truck? Up at 2 m. They can no longer pull in on our road networks. Bus Éireann came back and said that it has to have buses with fewer seats to travel the roads because its buses are too big, because we are not allowed to cut the hedges on our roadsides for the protection of pedestrians, cyclists, bus networks and basic travel.

When county councils put up signage, under their own legal requirements, the signs have to be a metre off the road to allow for mirrors and things to pass for safety, but our roads are closing in. With all the statistics the Minister had from TII on our road networks, he refused to spend the budget it asked him to spend on upgrading our road network for the health and safety of all vehicle users.

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